Corporate culture is the values or beliefs that everyone in the organization practices until they become customs. This helps forge both old and new people together as one. The organizational culture is set in a direction to align with the business strategy in order to achieve success. But if one day toxic culture gradually erodes the values that were once set, there is a high chance that people in the organization will easily resign. Therefore, to prevent the loss of personnel, here are 5 warning signs that the company is entering Toxic Culture
What is Toxic Culture?
Toxic Culture or toxic culture is a bad environment that occurs within the organization, sending negative energy that undermines morale in work, obstructing the skill development of personnel, and it becomes a trigger that causes people in the organization to have bad relationships with each other, resulting in unhappiness at work, not reaching goals, and causing the organization not to grow because people who encounter Toxic Culture cannot continue to stay in the organization
5 warning signs of Toxic Culture that destroy the organization's atmosphere
Toxic Culture is the main factor that causes people in the organization to resign. Even if the salary is high or there are good benefits, but if the culture is toxic, it makes them resign because everyone wants to find a happy work life and escape far from organizations with Toxic Culture. The 5 warning signs that employers must pay attention to before it's too late are:
The environment with gossip behind backs or sarcastic remarks towards each other
Good colleagues or good teammates are one of the factors that will help overcome problems during work smoothly. When people in the team make mistakes, they should talk and give feedback directly and diplomatically so that the listener can be corrected quickly. But if people in the organization divide into factions and create toxic organizational culture, employers will definitely face big problems.
Because an environment surrounded by people who like to gossip and criticize is a very bad toxic corporate culture. Even though the body of the accused person may not have physical wounds, those sarcastic words have a direct impact on the mental state. It may cause that employee to be stressed at work and make them unable to achieve goals.
How to deal with gossip in the workplace
As an employer, you should not ignore bullying or gossip incidents. Employers must clearly show their stance that gossip is a bad thing because it creates rifts between people, is unacceptable, and prevents the organization from developing forward. If employers ignore this behavior, it will become that gossiping is something the organization can accept, and may cause employers to lose other personnel because they cannot tolerate toxic organizational culture anymore. One thing that will change the atmosphere in the organization to be more positive is to organize bonding activities for people in the organization to talk, adjust understanding more, and also open opportunities to exchange ideas with each other.
The environment that fears failure
When employees are punished for mistakes from work, they will view this failure as shameful and blame themselves that the thought process or work planning that they have done from the beginning is not effective, resulting in them fearing failure and not daring to use this mistake to develop their own work skills. If all employees have the mindset that "fear of failure," the organization will be frozen, no one dares to create new things in their work, there is no action on new things, there is no skill development to improve, and those who are aware will rush to resign in the end.
How to deal with fear of failure in the organization
Punishment will cause them to have mental wounds. What employers need to deal with is not to punish, but to help find out what factors cause work failures to prevent mistakes in other work and adjust their perspective to make them feel that mistakes are normal, anyone can make mistakes, make mistakes and start again, try again, do again, and use mistakes as lessons to not make mistakes next time. When they are not afraid of failure at work, it will allow the organization to continue to grow by employees continuously producing creative works.
The environment that fears employers
The fear that employees have towards employers to the point of not wanting to be near, not daring to make eye contact is toxic corporate culture. Suppose employers never listen to anyone's ideas or receive orders and do them immediately without disputing the reasonableness. When it accumulates, corporate culture will become passive (Passive), resulting in employees having anxiety and lack of confidence in work because they don't know when they will be criticized. People with this behavior who can't handle it will eventually resign.
How to deal with an environment where employees fear employers
If employers can evaluate employees, employers themselves must also accept being evaluated. In this world, no one is 100% perfect and no one knows all of their own mistakes. If employers let employees give feedback on themselves and are ready to accept shortcomings, employees will stop fearing employers. Also, if you give employees opportunities to show ideas in work, don't take your own thoughts as supreme, employees will dare to speak and argue with employers more. Even if their ideas are rejected, it's still better than not expressing opinions about work at all.
The environment that lacks empathy
For an organization to grow strongly, all employees must look at the same goal, take responsibility for their own duties as best as possible. But if each person has their own goals, compete with each other, stab behind backs, lack empathy for teammates or colleagues, only catch mistakes and don't care about their own responsibilities, it means this organization is not a "team". This is called toxic organizational culture. Besides the organization not reaching the set goals, there is also an opportunity to lose many personnel because this negative environment makes working not happy anyway.
How to deal with the environment that lacks empathy
Employers must have empathy equally for everyone in the organization. When something happens and decisions must be made, emotions should not be the basis and think reasons from many angles, not leaning towards one side. When employees know that employers truly have equality, see wrong as wrong, see right as right, have empathy in every decision, and have goals to reach the finish line, employees will follow the example that employers have shown.
The environment where employees resign at high rates
If employee resignation rates are high or there are frequent absences, you can see the overall picture that there must be reasons causing this situation to occur. One thing that is most likely is "toxic organizational culture". When the environment is toxic, there is no need to endure it to be tired mentally, whether it is employees who have worked for many years or employees who have recently started work and then resigned, there is no reason for them to endure that environment.
How to deal with organizational environment where employees resign at high rates
Employers must survey what is happening in the work environment. Asking face-to-face probably won't get anyone to dare to answer. A good idea is to conduct a survey for employees to answer or complain anonymously about what they want, what they don't like, or what they want to improve, to know the problems that employees are facing. When employers get data that hits the point from employees, they can use it to adjust and resolve toxic organizational culture to disappear.
Summary
These are 5 warning signs showing that your organizational culture is becoming toxic. Toxic Culture is harmful to both employees in the organization who will choose to resign to escape that terrible environment, and harmful to the organization that cannot retain good Talent. Therefore, if you want the organization to reach the set goals, you should change toxic organizational culture to become good organizational culture.
Learn more about our stories at What is organizational culture? What does good organizational culture look like? And if you want to learn more about how to cultivate corporate culture in the Ngern Tidlor style, join TIDLOR Culture Wow and exchange knowledge about values with us.
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Sources:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/toxic-work-culture
https://www.inc.com/tanya-prive/4-devastating-consequences-of-a-toxic-workplace-culture.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/08/26/is-your-company-culture-toxic-heres-how-to-tell/?sh=5fada851d47f